Chapter 25

Wednesday

General Conklin was eating breakfast in my suite again when I exited my bedroom. “Any plans for today?” he asked.

“Not if you have something I need to do. Otherwise, I felt it would be a good idea to start checking the numerous small feelings of danger that I still get. They feel like the ones I got from the people we rounded up in Nicaragua after capturing the rebels,” I explained.

“That definitely sounds like something we need to do. I think I can help with the transportation problem for the ceremony. There is plenty of room around the stadium. I want to set up tents to house people overnight, along with a couple of field kitchens and a combat support hospital. That way, many of the people can spend the night.

We’ve got the underground rail system running again and will have a full complement of trains running for twenty-four hours before and after the ceremony. We’re flying in all the Russian and Chinese troop trucks we captured that are still functioning and will offer free rides to the stadium. Afterwards, we’ll take people back to any areas that don’t have ready trolley access,” he explained.

“Great idea, but I have two requests,” I replied. “I’d have enough field kitchens to feed 50,000 people, and enough combat support hospitals to treat a large portion of those people, at least the most critical ones. Also, plan on the tents becoming a semi-permanent city for a while. Many of the people here don’t have enough to eat. If you can get a transport, you can use most of the grain remaining from the goliath tanker we captured.”

“Where are you keeping the Russians we captured?” I asked.

“Your cousin Jim Reynolds the third commed us and offered us the Lucky J Laos for the time being. They had evacuated it when the fighting in Laos started and haven’t returned yet. He said to tell the Russians prisoners that they had to grow everything they intended to eat after the harvest this fall. He’s also sending some to each of the other Lucky Js,” he chuckled.

“Ouch, talk about incentive,” I replied.

“How badly does the Russian government want them back?” I asked.

“No idea,” he replied, shrugging.

“Tell the State Department to issue a worldwide broadcast showing how the Russians planned ahead of time to seize control of the countries they grabbed at the end of the MEW. Remind everyone how they stayed on the sidelines until the allies had the remaining troops on the run and then they ‘jumped in to help’ by annexing those countries. Have them tell Russia that we’ll return their 180,000 troops in exchange for the countries they stole.

“If they raise a fuss about that, start telling the world that the Russians fomented the MEW and even aided the Arabs knowing that the Arabs would lose. We can’t prove it, but the evidence is pretty damning. That should shut them up and will probably upset the remaining Arabs in those countries. They’ll probably cause enough problems that Russia will eventually surrender those countries.”

“Remind me to never upset you,” Conklin laughed. “Cortez is still busy overseeing everything here, but Cooper and his crew are back from Russia. Have them go with you to round up the dangerous people you still sense,” he suggested.

That sounded like a good idea so I commed him. “Hey, Cooper, it’s Gator. Got any plans for today?” I asked.

“Not until you commed. What’s up?” he asked.

“Want to go on a roundup like the one the day after we defeated the Nicaraguan rebels?”

“Sure, when and where?” he asked.

“Where are you guys staying?” I queried.

“We’re at some big sports complex a few klicks west of you,” he replied.

“Great, I’ll meet you there at 0700 hours,” I said.

Then I asked the General to have someone get six of the Chinese fusion grav sleds for the girls and to have someone instruct them on how to use them. I also wanted to claim any that the military didn’t need. I didn’t think they’d want too many since everything was in Chinese.

Cooper and company were just getting to their grav sleds when I arrived. Since I brought a large contingent of the RCC troops to help shuttle people and things, Cooper grinned when he saw his brother and gave him a hug. Then he smacked him on the head, playfully.

“Where to, boss?” Cooper asked. I showed him my nav computer with thirty-nine vectors plotted from the area where I wanted to start. They only covered the northwestern quarter of China. I explained that I wanted to start with those in case they represented someone in cahoots with Russia. If we finished those, the next section would be a continuation of the Mongolian border with Russia until we reached the end of the border with Korea. The third section was from there to the border with Vietnam. The final section would complete the circuit of the borders.

We’d need to move away from Chongqing to get second vectors to establish where the dangers were. All I had now were vectors from Chongqing. I had no idea where along each vector our potential target lay. It could be five klicks away or three thousand.

Rather than take the vectors in a clockwise order, I started with one near the center because it was the one where I felt the strongest sense of danger. About eight hundred klicks away from Chongqing, I plotted intersecting vectors for each threat I felt. By the time I finished, my nav comp looked as if someone had dropped a double handful of spaghetti on a map.

Fortunately, I’d color-coordinated the ten strongest feelings, which helped eliminate many of the crossing vectors. None of the top ten seemed to be anywhere near the Russian border, although the strongest one was still directly in front of us ... somewhere. It looked as if it might be near Ürümqi, capital of the Xinjiang Province. If not there, it might be near Karamay.

“Karamay,” I said the word quietly to myself. Saying the name of the city was like opening the door of Mr. Taylor’s family market back home. Each time the door opened, a small bell rang. The bell ringing in my mind now was a warning bell.

After hooking my computer up to the laser satellite communication system, I looked up Karamay. “Aha,” I thought after reading that Karamay was the hub of Chinese oil production in the Xinjiang Province. The Chinese and Russians had jointly built a huge, 250-klick-long oil pipeline from near Karamay to the Bakhtu border crossing. From there, a Russian oil pipeline continued west, joining with what had been a joint Russian/Kazakh pipeline when built. Now, it was just a Russian pipeline to the Black Sea.

“And the plot thickens,” I thought to myself, remembering that one of the three Russian convoys entering China crossed the border at Bakhtu and was headed ... towards Karamay. The other Russian convoy that entered had been headed for Ürümqi, the Provincial capital. They obviously wanted the Province bad enough to commit 120,000 troops. Who knew how many troops they had planned to airlift in to help seize and hold the Province?

I commed Cooper and let him know what I had discovered and what I was thinking.

“Damn, them Russkies are as devious as you are,” he laughed.

“Maybe less devious than careful planners,” I replied thoughtfully. “Remember, Russians love chess, and a third of the world’s Grand Masters have been Russian. They obviously planned this strategy even before the MEW began. They knew their own oil reserves were dwindling. Kazakhstan still has a lot of oil and natural gas, as does the Xinjiang Province of China. China, Russia, and Europe are still semi-dependent on oil and natural gas, although Europe is rapidly moving towards American-supplied fusion power.”

The U.S. had reduced the per capita usage of oil-based products by 90% compared to the highest usage right before the Welfare Wars. Much of the reason was dwindling supplies produced at home. The extreme measures companies went to before to extract as much oil as they could proved to be so damaging to the environment that they had been discontinued in North America.

Now, methane clathrate provides enough methane to fuel most engines that previously ran on gasoline or diesel. Still, many people continue to use gasoline and diesel because they don’t want to convert the engines to run on methane or can’t afford to convert them. As expensive as gasoline and diesel are compared to methane, I have to wonder what they’re thinking.

Anyway, Russia grabbed Kazakhstan for both the oil and the pipeline. A considerable portion of the Russian economy is now centered around refining oil and selling the fuels derived from it, as well as the numerous other petroleum byproducts and useful compounds. Minerals from old and new mines in Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan are also helping the Russian economy, especially gold from Kyrgyzstan. I laughed wondering if the Russians would have tried to intervene in Nicaragua and Honduras if they had known about all the precious metals and other minerals still hiding there.

Yes, the Russians had planned this out decades ago, and we had just screwed up their end game. I hoped that maybe I had outmaneuvered their chess masters, this time.

With a lengthy stop to plot the second vectors, it took us ninety minutes to approach Ürümqi. Even before we reached the city, I could tell that the vector I was following was somewhere beyond the city. Had the danger been in Ürümqi, I would have felt the vector descending like the glide path of a plane landing. Instead, it remained beyond the horizon for a few more minutes before I felt it descending.

The closer we got to Karamay, the more danger vectors I felt emerge from what I had originally considered a single vector, easily more than twenty at first estimate. “We’ve got a problem, the one big danger vector is now more than twenty, most in that complex east of the city,” I warned Cooper.

We slowed near what turned out to be a large cluster of closed refineries that had been built years before the economic collapse. I crept forward on my sled until I was right over one of the dangers I felt. Letting my consciousness flow outward, I didn’t see anything at first. I had to concentrate on the precise source of the danger to realize what I was looking at.

“Call Conklin, we’re going to need a ton of EOD teams here. The dangers I feel are small explosive devices inside all the pipelines feeding the main pumping station,” I commed to Cooper.

“Damnit,” he hissed in reply.

Having determined what the smaller dangers were, I next checked on the second largest one. It, too, was an explosive in a pipeline, but the explosive was inside the pipe, attached to the wheel that could shut off the flow of oil going to Russia. It took a couple minutes to realize what I was looking at. “Someone rigged the shutoff gate to explode if it was closed. It includes a radio transmitter that will send a signal to the other bombs, too,” I reported to Cooper.

“I’m going to check the last source of danger that I feel in this area,” I reported.

“Fire squads 2 and 3, go with Jim,” Cooper ordered.

Two minutes later, we were surrounding a huge, walled villa. Given the wealth in this area, the villa wasn’t surprising. There were several large villas nearby. Nine armed guards patrolled the grounds between the wall and the villa, with another manning the guard booth for the entrance to the compound. I found a well-stocked armory in the barracks for the guards, and another inside the house.

The man was using the radio and I’d seen a laser antenna on the roof. Zipping to the rooftop, I dug through the cluttered upper storage compartment of my sled and found what I was looking for. Opening the box carefully so I didn’t smudge the clear disk with fingerprints, I set the unit up with the clear disk a mere fraction of a centimeter above the laser emitter. I affixed the second disk inside the receiver array, making sure that both were plugged into my sled’s computer.

“Cooper, does anyone in your squad speak Russian?” I asked when I commed him.

“Ford, go see what Jim needs,” Cooper ordered one of the squad members.

Fifteen minutes later, we relayed the intercepted message to General Conklin, along with a brief recap in English. Vasily, the man inside, was reporting to Gennady, his boss in the FSB. Vasily had been here for twenty years, greasing palms to make sure the Chinese built the pipeline to the Bakhtu border crossing. He reported that he’d planted the explosives on each feeder pipeline and put the detonator in the manual shutoff valve for the main line to Russia, just like he’d been ordered to do. His boss told him to evacuate tonight, bringing his men, as well as his laser transmitter and any documents showing what he had done while he was there.

Cooper arrived right after I told him what was going on. In the meantime, I scanned the rest of the villa’s property, including the barracks, and found another ten guards sleeping. Vasily was in his office, which had a window. Unfortunately, the window had the same sticker that the ones for my new house had. That meant it would take several shots to break it, and I didn’t want to give him any time to react in case he had some way to manually detonate all the explosives.

I explained my idea to Cooper, and he agreed to it. Moving next to the second-story wall right behind Vasily and his desk, I quickly set six small, shaped explosive charges. Once I finished, I attached a long cord to the blasting caps and backed away, moving above the roof as I played out cord. Once I handed the detonator off to Cooper, two of Cooper’s squad members prepared to shut down all radio transmissions from the house and to block his laser communications. Two more had all the outside guards targeted. Once they were down, they would target the exits of the barracks.

“Ready, Jim?” Cooper commed.

“Ready,” I replied.

“Ready, Tank, Ford?” Cooper commed.

“Ready,” Tank replied.

“Ready,” Ford answered.

“Ready, Hoss, Boomer?” Cooper commed.

“Ready,” Hoss answered.

“Ready,” Boomer answered.

“On my mark ... three ... two ... one ... go,” Cooper commed everyone.

The wall in front of me exploded. Even as far back as I was, I noted chips of brick flying around me, although the shielding kept them from hitting the sled or me. Even before I could physically see him, I fired three tranq rounds through the hole aimed where Vasily was. Then I zipped through the hole and used my expanded awareness to make sure nobody was heading for the office. The only other people in the house now were the four Chinese women who appeared to be the cooks and cleaning staff.

Still, looks can be deceiving, so I kept watching them. Vasily was down, so I quickly secured him with quick cuffs. With him secure, I exited through the hole in the wall so Cooper would know I was okay and had my prisoner cuffed. After a second for my computer to align the laser antenna with the closest laser satellite, I commed Cooper, “Primary secure, office secure.”

“Affirmative, outer guards are down and seven of ten from the barracks are down,” Cooper replied.

“Want me to get the last three guards?” I asked.

“Go for it,” he replied, so I zipped over to the barracks. The three guards had taken a position behind the rock wall of the armory and were hurriedly dragging ballistic gel over to reinforce the wall.

Too bad they didn’t think about the roof. Standing the sled on its nose right above the three men, I took aim with my 11 mm rifle since I had to shoot through both the shingle roof and the drywall ceiling inside the building.

I made the first shot, hitting the man in the right shoulder, and quickly targeted and shot the second man the same way. By then the third man had figured out where the shots were coming from and ran out of the armory where Boomer shot him.

“The other two are down with right shoulder wounds,” I advised, watching as Ford and Boomer made their way into the armory, securing both men. Once secured, they filled the wounds with Styptic-Foam. I saw two of the RCC sleds just outside the door of the barracks ready to load the two men onto the covered stretchers.

Two more sleds had the unconscious guards loaded inside the crates. Another had Vasily in one crate and the four housekeepers in the second crate. They were soon on their way to Forward Base Papa.

More of the RCC sleds were arriving to empty the armory. I warned that there was a second armory inside the house. By the time I got back to the house, the laser transmitter had been removed, as had the radio antenna. Cooper and I entered the office and began tossing chunks of the rock wall out through the gap in the wall. Once we had most of it cleared out, I headed for the wall safe. It took a few minutes to determine the numbers in the combination, as well as to make sure the safe wasn’t booby-trapped. Then it took two tries to determine that the dial had to go left 4 turns, right 3, left 2, and right 1 turn before it opened.

“Oh, yeah,” Cooper exclaimed when he saw the contents. I already knew there were a lot of precious metals and diamonds inside. What I was most excited about were the ledgers that detailed every withdrawal he had made from his FSB-supplied account, as well as what the money had been used for. It listed the names of each Chinese official he had bribed and how much he had given them. Several officials still received monthly bribes. Why he entered everything in Chinese instead of Russian was beyond me.

“Intelligence will want these,” I said excitedly as I handed the two ledgers to Cooper, explaining what they were.

They were returned on one of the RCC sleds hauling back the contents of the armory in the barracks. Tank and Ford came in and helped go through everything in the office. I did one more detailed scan of the office walls, floor, and ceiling, as well as each piece of furniture in the office. When I finished, I commed Don and asked how to safely empty an account from the FSB.

Laughing, he gave me an account number to use, one that not even the FSB could trace. Using account information in the first journal, as well as the note with the password hidden beneath the felt lining in the bottom of the safe, I accessed the FSB account and transferred just over two hundred million Rubles into the account Don had given me. I had no idea how much that was worth in G3 dollars.

I performed the same search in every room of the villa, and then in the cellar. Hidden behind a workbench in the cellar was another, larger safe. This one was two-thirds full of precious metal coins and small ingots, as well as a myriad of different precious gems. Two carbon fiber cases about the same size as the one holding my samples of elements each held six glass syringes, needles, and ten vials of a clear liquid. The label only said DQX-417.

There was also a business card hidden beneath the felt lining the bottom of the safe. It had a second account number, and even had the password written on the back of the card. I walked outside used my computer to empty that account of more than a billion Chinese Yuan. While a substantial amount, it wasn’t worth as much as it sounds like. I knew how much the Yuan was worth compared to the U.S. G3 Dollar. Each Yuan was only worth about five cents, but the total was still fifty million G3 dollars.

I carried one of the cases upstairs to Cooper, and sent four of the RCC guys down to empty the safe in the basement, including the second case. “Offhand, I’d say it was used for interrogating people,” Cooper commented when he saw the contents of the case. We sent it to intel on the sleds carrying the contents of the house armory.

Everything from the two armories would end up at home. The contents of the two safes would be divided. The RCC troops were still going through the house, loading just about anything that would fit inside the crates. They explained that what they took would help furnish the empty houses along Neland Road and Stinson Road since Don had purchased all the empty ones to house people. I wouldn’t be surprised if some would also end up in my new home.

It was nearly dark by the time we finished stripping the villa. Cooper commed General Conklin and I commed Don to let him know about what was now in the account, as well as about the furniture. I also told him about the contents of the two armories and the two safes.

General Conklin confirmed that the case we had sent contained a truth serum the Russians use to make people answer questions honestly. They had used it on Vasily and he was still talking, hours later.

All the explosives had been disarmed and removed. The EOD techs had removed the smaller bombs and then shut down all the smaller pipelines so that nothing was flowing into the main pipeline to Russia, and then removed the sabotaged valve and replaced it with a new one. They were just finishing as I emerged from the villa.